


Time Crumbles All

by wine_dark_seashells



Category: Original Work
Genre: :(, Global Warming, I Made Myself Cry, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Apocalypse, Pretty dark themes, Sad Ending, also:, somewhere in the future, this is wayyy darker than i usually write guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29373378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wine_dark_seashells/pseuds/wine_dark_seashells
Summary: In the maybe-distant future, a family of three struggles to make their way through the heat and dust. A father contemplates their non-existent future. If they make it to tomorrow, if they make it at all, time will catch up to them. Eventually.





	Time Crumbles All

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly this is pretty dark guys. There's vague talk of suicide as a way out of what's basically hell. Also there's a suicide pill.
> 
> I made myself cry guys. Have at it.

It was time.

It always seemed to be time’s fault, these days. Maybe that was why people had made a habit of doing away with it when the seconds dragged on. It was always time’s fault.

Well, time and the human race.

Looking back, the warning signs were oh-so obvious. Great glaring klaxons that rang for days and days. “Unprecedented temperatures…” “Record high…” “Stay safe, look after yourselves out there…”

Warning signs, all ignored.

But that’s too abstract. Let’s focus in a little. There. A family walks a faultline, ragged, heads covered. The father picks up his youngest daughter. The road is too hot for her little feet, despite her heavy boots. She is tired. So is her sister but her sister is old enough to walk through the pain.

The family’s name is Davits. The lady at the shelter had spelled it D-A-V-I-D-S. Little Mara hadn’t liked that.  _ It’s spelled DAVITS, _ the girl had cried.  _ It was mummy’s, so be careful with it! _ Pedro Davits had apologised. His eyes had quietly said that they’d had this argument before. Bev had picked up her younger sister and grimaced.

Now that shelter is long behind them, crumbled to dust. Nothing lasts long these days.

“Da?”

Pedro strokes his daughter’s hair back from her face and raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah, Mar’?”

“Why were you crying when we left the big house, Da? I thought you hated it, wouldn’t you be happy to go?”

Cicadas roar from the side of the road. Pedro wipes a drop of sweat from his cheek. He racks his aching brain to think of an answer that isn’t the truth.

“Dust in my eyes, little one. That’s all.”

“Oh.”

Mara rests her forehead on her father’s shoulder and trusts him with all her heart. Her father fumbles with the pills in his pocket and hates himself for lying.

The pills had belonged to an old man at the last shelter. He had taken one look at Pedro’s daughters and handed them over. “You’ll need them more than I will,” he’d said. “If it gets to be too much.”

Pedro hoped it wouldn’t get to be too much.

The sun blazes hotter overhead. Bev tugs on her father’s shoulder and fans her face. Pedro nods, understanding. Bev’s voice had been one of the first things to go, about three shelters back. The combination of the heat, dust, and a bad case of asthma had dealt a blow that she was unlikely to ever get over. An elderly enby a couple of shelters ago had been the same way. They had taught the whole family the hand-signs used by the military and appropriated by the masses.

Learning a new language - for a language it was - had been difficult, but Pedro thought it worth it if only to be able to hear his daughter’s thoughts again.

Bev leads them a ways off the side of the road, to a small cluster of pittosporum trees. A rock outcropping provides some shade. There’s even some bright moss for a cushion. This quiet place is beautiful, for a world such as this. Carefully, Bev pulls a canteen half-full of water from her satchel. She offers it to Mara first, and the girl suckles the spout in relief. Pedro stops her from draining it and hands it back to the older girl. Their world would be quiet if not for the cicadas. 

The sun is hot. It bears down with a terrifying intensity, dripping and pooling everywhere it shouldn’t be. Little shards of glass strike tiny flames in the cropped grass. Pedro is quick to stamp them out, but it’s a sign they shouldn’t linger for too long. But now, in this single moment, a father can allow his daughters this small comfort.

Pedro Davits does not know what is going to happen next. Well, in terms of his own plans he does. They will continue onwards, bear the heat and the dust like they always have. If another storm rolls through they will bear the acidic rain silently, like they always have. They have no other option. There’s simply nowhere else to go. But in terms of their future, Davits does not know what will happen.

No one does.

“The future” is an alien concept. Nothing lies in their path but more heat and more dust and more storms. There is no “brighter tomorrow.”

Pills are one of the only ways out now. With no escape from the heat and almost daily earthquakes, permanent settlement is impossible. The pills will end it all. For some, it is the only way they can understand. But the pills are running out. The measly three that Pedro has gotten his hands on would sell for more than a hundred dollars each. That would be enough to buy supplies for a month. He doesn’t want to sell them, though. They are the only way out. For him, for his daughters.

Maybe he will trick his daughters into taking them. Maybe he’ll give them a choice. All that matters is that he will look after them no matter what. They are his life, his everything. They must come first. If it all gets to be too much, he will make sure they don’t suffer.

All Pedro knows for certain is that there will be an end. It will come. Eventually. Maybe it will be tomorrow. Maybe it won’t come soon enough. But it will end.

For now, however, the heat blanks all thoughts of a non-existent future. Pedro’s daughters are quiet, and, unless he is very much wrong, as happy as one could be right now. He strokes Mara’s hair back from her face and squeezes Bev’s shoulder gently. The cicadas sound like a chorus. Almost like the music of the old days. It sounds like peace.

For now, in the shade of a friendly rock, Pedro Davits sits with his daughters and longs for a future that will never come. The pills sit heavily in his pocket, but they are easy to cast out of his mind. For now.

For now, they sit, and they wait. For what, they have no idea. But they will wait, in this tiny moment of peace. 

Little Mara Davits rests her head on her father’s knee and dreams of a snowfall she’s never seen.


End file.
